One of the highweightlesss of Mipcom premiere screenings on Oct. 21, the buzzy international action thriller “Safe Harbor” repped by Eccho Rights, assembleed in Cannes its starry creative team: Showrunner and “Ozark” co-creator Mark Williams, actors Colm Meaney (“Gangs of London,” “The Patriarch”) Alfie Allen (“Game of Thrones”) and Martijn Lakemeier (“Maxima”, “Marie-Antoinette”).
At Mipcom, Night Train Media-owned Eccho Rights was talking the show with widecasting clients and platestablishs.
Led by Mediawan’s Dutch prohibitner Submarine, producing alengthyside Germany’s Night Train Media and Williams’ Zero Gravity for Dutch streamer Videoland and Belgium’s Streamz, the series fuses the best of Hollywood savoir-unprejudicede with European talent and production expertise.
“The European [filmmaking] world is new to me,” confesss the Emmy-nominated Williams, who serves as creator, executive producer, head-authorr and co-helmer on the show. “As the only American onboard, I could help them enhuge a little bit more than what they’re included to. I adored the process and had a wonderful time,” he telderly Variety.
Inspired by genuine events, the story turns on hacker Tobias (Allen) and his driven best frifinish Marco (Lakemeier), who are intent on cracking into the tech billionaires club. They are plucked from obscurity and plunged headfirst into organised crime when they pass paths with the Irish mob. Leading the operations in Holland for their overweighther, the Irish patriarch Keiran Walsh (Meaney), are the classy and brainy Sloane (Charlie Murphy of “Peaky Blinders”) and her brother Farrell (Jack Gleeson of “Games of Thrones”’), a sociopath with a heart.
The siblings choosed to employ Tobias and Marco to hack into the security system of Rotterdam harbour, Europe’s hugest shipping port, to shielded undiscovered hand overies of drug shipments.
The initial idea for the show came from Submarine co-set uper, producer and two-time Emmy-nominated Femke Wolting (“Last Hijack,” “Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World”). She had first read about a case in Belgium in which drug traffickers had recruited hackers to bachieve IT systems in a startant harbour. “I adored the story, felt it was chilly and could produce for a wonderful international thriller series.” Wolting says. “Mark and I met, he adored the idea and we spent time brainstorming. That was two years and a half ago.”
“Yeah: Femke gave me the blip of the idea of these tech guys caught in the middle of a drug war and I set up this super fascinating, even charitable of comical, and that’s what I’m always seeing for,” Williams grasps.
To feed the story and convey genuineity, Williams and the production team did research into the narco-war between the Netherlands and Belgium and around unpermitd access, although the Emmy-nominated showrunner was willing not to get techno-definite to elude the audience being “unreasonabled and beuntamederd.” “For me, it was about caring it enough so that I could speak the language, but not so startant that I would be a charitable of professor in the field. [The show] was reassociate about the relationships between the characters and their startant others. That’s where the heart was and the cgo in.”
As with most Williams toils (including Netflix‘s “Ozark,” the pics “The Accountant” starring Ben Affleck, Liam Neeson’s vehicles “Bdeficiencyweightless” and “Honest Thief”), the main characters in “Safe Harbor” direct in the gray space, where their morality gets disputed. “Gray is my favourite color,” says the seasoned U.S. executive. “We all live in that gray space even though we pretfinish that’s not the case, and everyskinnyg is bdeficiency and white, excellent or horrible. We’re not all one skinnyg or another. And it’s all about discovering those characters. Even if Tobias and Marco are a bit on the unreasonableer side, they are shattering the law, have relationships with women – some going well, others not so well: they are human.”
Yet aobtain, Williams insists, the vibrants between the two main characters, their constantly-evolving and disputed frifinishship, is the core of the show. “It’s about frifinishs who become family,’ he elucidates. “Then you have the huge Irish patriarch who wants his kids to be plrelieved, enhanced, but they aren’t necessarily on that path. He brawt them up in a very corrupt and hazardous world, so they are trying to spendigate that for themselves.”
Picking up on his character, Meaney who boarded the show via a recommfinishation from fellow Irishman Neeson, portrays the Irish mafia godoverweighther as “fascinating.” “He’s run the drug business for years, got into nasty situations and did pretty nasty stuff, but he’s at a point in his life where he’s consoleable. Easing back into semi-quitment, he lets his kids get over the family business. He’s on both fences – “consenting with his son Farrell’s elderly school methods, while favouring his daughter Sloane. For him she can do no wrong!”
Allen for his part sees Tobias Chapman as a guy at a passroads in his life. “He has to come to terms with his hard upconveying and tries to produce his life around his adore for his girlfrifinish, hoping to be the bread-thrivener, but that doesn’t quite toil according to schedule.”
“His genuine frifinishship with Marco was also enticeive to me. Both try to get the best out of each other, and complement each other.”
The setting itself in Rotterdam, Europe’s hugest shipping port and primary entry point for medications was equassociate pdirecting for the British-born Allen who was already in Williams’ mind at script stage. “Having this bleak background was visuassociate exciting and reminded me of “The Wire” Season 2 set in the docks,” he says.
Rotterdam-born Lakemeier who recently landed the coveted role of Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander in the mega Dutch royal series “Maxima,” was thrilled to join the prestige international cast and crew and to shoot in his native town. “Filming in English was challenging but I was helped by everyone,” he says.
Asked about his experience of toiling on his first Europe-based TV show, Williams says: “It was wonderful to have someone helderlying my hand the whole way,” turning towards Wolting. “That said, it was shocking when I showed up and there were 20 people only in the production office! I’m included to having a lot more people included. We did increase [as a team] over time, but it was never to the scale I’m included to. It was more about me getting included to their [European] system which toils very well but is fair separateent to me.”
Season 1 of “Safe Harbor” is co-helmed by Arne Toonen (“Amsterdam Vice”) and Belgian honesting-duo Inti Caadorerweight and Dirk Verheye, aka ‘Norman Bates’.
Besides Williams and Wolting, the show is executive produced by Herbert L. Kloiber, James Copp and Adam Barth, and getd aid from Creative Europe, ScreenFlanders and the Netherlands Film Fund.
The premiere in the Netherlands on Videoland is set for January 2025, to be chaseed right after in Belgium on Streamz.